What Good Website Usability Looks Like: Think “Glance” and “Scan”

Well-known website usability expert Steve Krug (Don’t Make Me Think) advises to “make everything obvious and self-explanatory”. What’s his definition of “self-explanatory”: ANYONE on any page can tell what it is and how to use it, just by looking at it.

Visitors Won’t Stick Around to “Learn How a Website Works”

His thousands of usability studies (conducted by sitting with individual web surfers, watching their actions, and asking them to “think out loud”) have led him to conclude:

1.Visitors want to be able to figure out your web site at a GLANCE.

2.They want to be able to SCAN to find what they’re looking for. (If you’re using pull-down menus as part of your web navigation, they’re not visible to the scanning visitor. So your Main Menu topics need to be clear to visitors “at a glance” what they’ll find in that section.)

Website Usability Principles

Krug’s key principles of website usability include:

“Persistent navigation”: same place, every page

Design for scan-ability (other researchers like Jakob Nielsen have also found that 85% – 90% of visitors scan a web page first)

Create a clear visual hierarchy — to tell visitors what’s most important

Make your links obvious so visitors can’t miss them (studies have found that blue works best for links)

“Above the fold” copy should be the most important copy on the page. (Be sure not to bury key messages — only a small portion of visitors ever scroll down to the end of each page.)

Design Comes Before Copy in Creating Websites

Krug points out that web pages should be “design-driven”. You should figure out where you want the major items in terms of layout, and then write copy to fit the layout.